Digg/Buzz It Up

POLITICO 44

A new book is out with a highly critical but unsourced portrait of Hillary Clinton. This familiar occurrence — it’s happened too many times to count over the years — has usually been greeted with an equally familiar response: A fast and furious counterattack from the Clinton inner circle.

What’s notable about the highly publicized release of “Game Change,” however, is the virtual silence from the Clinton camp. The lack of public outrage seems to mark the sputtering end of what was once known as the Clinton political machine and underlines a fact that onetime Clinton loyalists acknowledge: The book’s primary sources about the former candidate and current secretary of state are her own former staffers and intimates.

As a result, there is no campaign of veteran Clintonites spinning the press corps and trying to pre-emptively discredit the book’s scathing depiction of Hillary Clinton as a rudderless candidate and a cheerleader for vicious tactics against eventual winner Barack Obama. There is no team of Clinton proxies going on cable television to denounce authors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann as scurrilous and unworthy of belief.

This time, Bill and Hillary Clinton are virtually alone.

While the low-key response to a brutal portrayal of Clinton in part reflected a decision to keep a prominent face of the Obama administration’s foreign policy above the fray, it was also a recognition of reality: The same senior aides who had leaked damaging gossip could hardly be expected to rebut it.

These people have violated the Clinton world’s final taboo: After savaging one another in the press for more than a year, the former aides finally turned on the principals.

“Game Change” peels back a decade of careful renovations off Hillary Clinton’s carefully constructed public face, casting her in the terms that defined her at her lows in the mid-1990s: scheming, profane, sometimes paranoid, often tone-deaf.

The authors report that Clinton and her aides plotted behind allies' backs to enter the 2004 presidential contest and that Clinton herself favored some of the nastiest tactics, such as suggesting that then-Sen. Barack Obama had been a drug dealer, in the 2008 campaign. And she continued to believe — without evidence, and long after her concession — that he had, in effect, stolen the Iowa caucuses by importing out-of-state voters.

“Everybody talked. Anybody that tells you they didn’t are lying to you,” lamented one former top Clinton aide, who mused that perhaps for the first time in a career of leaks and betrayals, the Clinton’s innermost circle of loyalists been breached.

The result leaves the Clintons exposed and isolated, their darkest suspicions — “us against the world” — validated. The closest parallel is the 1994 publication of “The Agenda,” by Bob Woodward, an account of Clinton administration policymaking that seared both Clintons and left them deeply distrustful for years of their own staff.

The rat enablers for the Clinton's covered for them for so many years the Clintons must have forgotten what kind of people they were dealing with . What did they expect from snakes like themselves ? Loyalty ?

Trying to figure out why anyone would be nice to or about an opponent during a political campaign. What is wrong with being down on your opponent? Oh I get it. She's was down on Obama therefore it is unacceptable. Yes, I see now.

"I don't know, but at least they knew how to balance a budget." - BoboTheMonkey -- The only reason Clinton had a surplus budget was because he robbed small business and workers with 35-40%+ taxes. The Clintons are political vermin who will say or do anything to benefit themselves. The only thing Bill did was teach kids how to lie and that BJ's aren't sex, and you know if you crossed Hillary she would rip your head off. They truly deserve each other.

The only "game over" is for Harry of the "light skinned negro" infamy. Good bye Harry. Take your racist views back to that small town in Nevada where you can do no harm. You do great harm as the Senate leader when you harbor such views. And Feinstein shows she is sympathetic to racists when she defends you.

People don't have to comment on every negative article or book that comes out. Hillary Clinton has one of the most important jobs in the world. She has more on her plate than responding to this gossip. She is doing a great job and as long as that idiot Bill Clinton keeps his mouth shut, no problem.

Yawn. This is the what? The 720th obituary the Clinton hating biased media has written? And as usual you're gonna have to eat crow.

Obama must really be terrified that Hillary will challenge him in 2012 to be launching these coordinated attacks through his lap dogs in the press. And yes Benny, you're one of the crawlers too.

Not surprising though with the latest Gallup polls showing Hillary as the most popular politician in the US ...73% I believe ...who would've thought? And the teleprompter reader just keeps sliding down. Oblunder is at what now? A glorious 46% approval rating? By 2012 his approval rating may sink even lower than W's. Unprecedented as the Mess-I-Uh would say.

Bill was dragged kicking and screaming to a balanced budget by (gasp) Newt Gingrich and his posse. The Executive Branch doesn't raise or spend ONE penny. Presidents are given too much blame and credit for deficits and surpluses when generally they are just along for the ride. Still can't help but kind of like old Bill. Hillary is another story.

20/20 Vision - if given the choice between Obama and Hillary, I would have picked Hillary any day. I think there was a limit to the damage she could have done, because she and Bill were known and predictable. If given the choice between McCain and Hillary, I would have picked Hillary as well. McCain is just unpredictable and erratic. All I cared about was fiscal responsibility last November and she was the only possibility at getting that.